![\"Misspelled](\"https:\/\/wordpress-157077-2960416.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Misspelled-Words-of-the-Day-Day-2-ion-Words.png\")
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Reminder: The purpose of Misspelled Word of the Day is not to try to make everyone a perfect speller, the purpose is to learn from misspellings and then teach the student the misspelled word of the day while instilling an understanding of written language in general. The intention is not to teach students to spell every word in the English language, of which there are more than one million, the intention is to teach the student to think about words differently and learn to question, and understand word structure.<\/p>\n
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So, drum roll please\u2026.this week\u2019s misspelled word of the day is: <invenshiun>. I love these mistakes because they are so easy to explain and once properly understood, they help the child deeply understand 100s of other words with the same suffix. And that is what this week\u2019s post is about, a suffix issue.<\/p>\n
It will only take one word to demonstrate the reality of our writing system that this speller has not yet learned. Now, hold on to you seats, because I am about to tell you something that has major implications for how you analyze words – <tion> and <sion> are not suffixes. They simply do not exist as suffixes. The true suffix is the Latinate <-ion>. Let\u2019s take a look at the word <action> to illustrate this point. The word <action> has the base <act> and the suffix <-ion> which is illustrated in this word sum: <act> + <-ion> \u00e0 action. If we suggest that the suffix is <-tion> and put it into a word sum to test that hypothesis, we get <ac> + <-tion> and we can then immediately realize that <ac> cannot be the base because <act> is the base of the word \u00a0of <action> and as the base, it needs to carry the meaning and <ac> is not a meaningful base. Therefore, the suffix has to be <-ion>. With this new information you can then build a matrix for a whole family of words related in meaning and spelling to the base <act>, but like <sign>, the base had different pronunciations depending on what suffix was added! Below is a word matrix to help illustrate the concept (created with the free mini-matrix maker at http:\/\/www.neilramsden.co.uk\/spelling\/matrix\/<\/a>):<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at all of the words the student just learned to read and spell with this new found reality:<\/p>\n act + ed \u00e0 acted<\/p>\n act + ing \u00e0 acting<\/p>\n act + or \u00e0 actor<\/p>\n act + s \u00e0 acts<\/p>\n re + act \u00e0 react<\/p>\n re + act + ion \u00e0 reaction<\/p>\n re + act + ive \u00e0 reactive<\/p>\n re + act + ive + ly \u00e0 reactively<\/p>\n act + u + al \u00e0 actual<\/p>\n act + u + al + ly \u00e0 actually<\/p>\n Ok, now back to <invenshiun>.\u00a0 Take a moment to hypothesize what you think the base is of this word is. Write a word sum down. Remember to 1) Think about what the word means, 2) Look for any relatives (see <act> for a refresher about word relatives that share the base) and 3) figure out the morphological parts of the word. Ok, ready for the answer?<\/p>\n What is an invention? It is something that was invented, right? By an inventor? So, we can agree that the base is <invent> (and possibly vent), but for this post, we will go with <invent>. Do you see what I see? The <t> that is usually included in the <tion> suffix is already there<\/i> \u2013 it is part of the base, not the suffix. What the student will notice that the phoneme represented by the grapheme <t> changes to a \/sh\/when followed by <ion>! Voila \u2013 problem and guessing solved! When a student perceives \/shun\/ or \/zhun\/ at the end of a word, they will know that it is usually represented by <-ion>.<\/p>\n Some other <-ion> words are: nation: \u00a0nat(e) + ion \u00e0 nation<\/p>\n discuss + ion \u00e0discussion (this has a probably prefix as well, but we are just looking at <-ion> for now.)<\/p>\n instruct + ion \u00e0 instruction (in + struct + ion; de + struct + ion; re + con + struct + ion; struct + ure\u2019 struct + ure + al)<\/p>\n Homework: If you have a student that misspells these words, do this exercise with them and report back!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Misspelled](\"https:\/\/wordpress-157077-2960416.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/action-orthography.png\")
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